The 200-ton house will travel approximately one mile around campus

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Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

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Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Yellow tape is photographed on the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Workers move the Scheller House on the campus of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019. The 1904 home that currently houses offices for Associated Students, is being moved to a parking lot on 10th and San Antonio Streets. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

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San Jose State likes to be known as a university on the move. And, on Saturday, that will be literally true when a historic home on campus is relocated to make room for a new science building. It’s just the latest chapter for the Scheller House, a 1904 building that’s shown an amazing knack for survival.

The house, used as offices for San Jose State’s Associated Students, already has been lifted from its foundation and moved to the university entrance gate. Saturday morning, it will be slowly transported around the block to its new home on South 10th Street, near the campus’ northeast corner. An eight-story, 161,000 square-foot science building with a $181 million price tag will be built in its place.

“It’s a pretty cool thing,” Charlie Faas, San Jose State’s vice president for administration and finance said of the move. “It’s extremely complicated but the positive thing is that we’re doing it the right way.”

To accommodate the relocation, Fourth Street between San Carlos and San Fernando streets and San Fernando Street between Fourth and Ninth streets will be closed all day Saturday. The 6,500 square-foot house weighs 400,000 pounds — that’s 200 tons — so navigating it around city streets and corners required months of planning. Computer models were created, street lights rotated to make room and everything was figured out to the smallest detail.

“There’s only four inches on either side between the house and the trees on the paseo,” Faas said. “That’s how close it is.”

Preservation Action Council Executive Director Brian Grayson, who has been kept in the loop on the project, said it’s strange to see the historic house ready to travel — but he’s still got his fingers crossed. “We’ll feel better once the move is over and the house is safely ‘installed,’ ” he said.

But this journey is also just another twist and turn in the Scheller House story. The house is a rare surviving example in San Jose of the 20th century residential work of architect Theodore Lenzen. He also designed the Security and Letitia buildings on South First Street and the old City Hall that was in what’s now Plaza de Cesar Chavez.

According to Preservation Action Council research, the California Colonial Revival house was built on the corner of Fifth and San Carlos Street for businessman Henry Beaumont Martin and his wife Louise Scheller. Victor Scheller, Louise’s brother and an early San Jose district attorney, also lived in the house from 1905-15. The house takes its name from him.

San Jose State continued to grow around the bungalow over the next several decades, but it wasn’t until the early 1990s that the Scheller House became a flashpoint for historic preservation in the city. The university recognized a need for a new science building even back then and made plans to raze the abandoned house to make room for it on San Carlos Street. Proposals were made to relocate the house to Kelley Park or Guadalupe Gardens but ultimately rejected. Developer Tim Lantz secured the demolition contract, but he wasn’t eager to knock it down. He pushed the demolition deadline as far as he could in hopes of finding a way to relocate the house.

The Preservation Action Council, formed only a few years earlier, made the case that SJSU was violating state preservation law, but the odds looked bleak. At least until then-Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Jeremy Fogel granted an injunction in 1994 to prevent the demolition until the house’s historic value could be determined. Part of the hearing was held inside the house so the judge and other observers could evaluate whether it was worth saving.

But rather than conduct a costly historic survey — because the house was on state property it never had been designated a city landmark — then-San Jose State President Bob Caret decided to leave the house alone and shelved the science building plans.

And so the house sat, for nearly five years, until alumni and the university’s Associated Students organization teamed up and invested about $3 million to restore the home. It was also moved slightly and rotated 90 degrees so the entrance faced the pedestrian paseo created with the closing of San Carlos Street through campus.

Associated Students moved its offices there in 2000 and the house spent the next 18 years as an unusual, architectural gem. At least until now, San Jose State finally began moving forward with a plan for the state-of-the-art science center and the Scheller House was again in the way. But a lot had changed in 25 years.

With the house restored and occupied, Faas said the situation was entirely different than in the 1990s. The university worked with students, faculty and the Preservation Action Council to determine the best way and place to move the house as plans began to take shape more than a year ago.

Sal Pizarro has written the Around Town column for The Mercury News since 2005. His column covers the people and events surrounding the cultural scene in Silicon Valley. In addition, he writes Cocktail Chronicles, a feature column on Silicon Valley bars and nightclubs.

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